Ron Littlepage: Gov. Scott's rhetoric is Mickey Mouse stuff

He’s living in a fantasy land that played out during the State of the State address he delivered at the start of the legislative session last week in Tallahassee.

For starters, he boasted that “we have invested record funding in protecting our environment.”

That would be the same environment that in reality he has inflicted severe damage upon by weakening the state’s water management districts, getting rid of top scientists who actually knew about protecting the environment, gutting efforts to manage growth and slicing and dicing regulations meant to protect the environment.

“Together we have cut taxes 24 times,” Scott said as if that’s been a good thing for all Floridians when in reality the cuts have benefited big businesses and corporations, not ordinary folks.

He talked about “dreams that start with getting a great education.”

“That’s why we are again proposing to invest record amounts in our K-12 education system,” Scott said, ignoring the reality that per-pupil spending is still lower than when he took office.

As for higher education, Scott promised to hold the line on tuition costs when the reality is university presidents complain that it is low tuition when compared to other states that is holding back their schools.

Scott’s address was more of a “please re-elect me” speech than anything else.

Without mentioning his name, Scott criticized his predecessor and likely opponent, Charlie Crist, for being a big spender who embraced “free money” and drove the state’s economy into the tank.

That’s simply not true. Crist was a lot of things according to what day of the week it was, but big spender was not one of them.

The Great Recession that clobbered Florida and the rest of the nation was brought on by other factors, not reckless spending in Tallahassee.

As for the “460,000 new private sector jobs since the end of 2010” that Scott takes credit for, the reality is the bulk of them are low-paying and will not lead to the “American dream” Scott talks about.

“We will make Florida the land of opportunity,” he said, closing with this:

“I want to share with you one last story. It is the story of a young man who lived in public housing as a kid who never knew his natural father, who saw his adopted dad struggle to keep a job.”

That young man, of course, was Scott.

“I’ve seen what happens to families who are struggling to find work. I’ve had Christmas without any presents. And I don’t want any of our people to ever feel stuck in those situations.”

Scott became thoroughly unstuck from such a situation by heading up a company that paid a record $1.7 billion fine for Medicare fraud, leaving that job with a $300 million golden parachute and spending $73 million of that money to buy the governor’s office of a state that turned down $51 billion of federal money to provide health care for 1 million poor Floridians, those very Floridians he says he wants to help.